


Wake to Sleep

by Akua



Category: Hannibal (TV), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: How Do I Tag, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I'll tag as I go, Master of Death Harry Potter, Mental Health Issues, Unreliable Narrator, bad things keep happening, magic responsible for stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-24
Updated: 2018-01-24
Packaged: 2019-03-08 20:42:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13466166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akua/pseuds/Akua
Summary: Harry knew, with the sinking kind of certainty that if he did not make it out now then this would continue. This winking in and out of existence would continue unless he made its stop. There was no time to think about what had happened, there was no time to think about his wife and his children (whom the last thing he remembered of them was watching his children board the Hogwarts express. Their waving hands and cheerful faces were the last things behind his eyes before he started winking in and out of existence). There wasn’t time to plan, to calculate—there was only time to escape.





	Wake to Sleep

Harry went from the train station to somewhere new between one breath and the next. He could almost still see the steam clouds that puffed up from the front of the train. The chatter of the crowds still buzzing in his ears which made the silence of this new place all the more disconcerting.

 

It was dark. He felt wet.

 

_(…u will…)_

 

There was something alive pressed against his ribs, but the dark of the room made it impossible to see what this new breathing creature was. Harry stayed still, he didn’t dare to shift even one inch of his thrumming existence. He held his breath and felt the creature breathe against him. It felt warm and was a small, sure small weight against his side.

 

Then he suddenly winked out of existence.

 

_((… a hand, molted and grey and rotting—but it was wrapped around his arm and holding on tight. The body rolled as if it was in pain, its teeth showing through the rippled holes of what had once been a face. It was alive, alive, alive—and if it had been seeking salvation then it was long passed the point of such a thing being attainable. Harry’s breath stuttered, because this was the grasping hands of the inferi, reaching out from dark waters—))_

 

And then he came back. He was in a different room with a warm, large fireplace that illuminated the room. He sat in an old, worn down armchair that had certainly seen better days. His left hand clutched a small glass of what smelled like weak fire whiskey. The glass was warm in his hand, just like how the fire warmed his knees.

 

For one long moment Harry did not feel panic. The only light in the room the light of the fire, and its flickering touch showed Harry the worn walls of the large living space he was sitting. Slowly he angled his head to look around the room to take in his surroundings. Strangely there was a bed crammed into the far corner. That was to the right. Looking over his left shoulder he could see the door. The ratty curtains that hung before the small door window did nothing to block out the fact that it was night and no light streamed in from a streetlight.

 

“Hello?” His voice came out hoarse, and a bit reedy thin. Harry distantly thought that it did not sound like himself. This was not his voice.

 

_( you…. )_

 

“Is someone there?” His throat itched in a way he wouldn’t be able to scratch.

 

Harry’s fingertips tingled, and the sensation ran from his fingers to his arms and all the way down to the soles of his feet. His left hand felt a flash of hot-cold, and he felt his lungs construct from an unknown pressure.

 

He let go of the glass, and watched it crash into the floor (the floors were hardwood, covered in gouges and scrapes) and surprisingly keep together even as all the contents spilled out freely.

 

The glasses felt wrong on his face. They felt too heavy – and Harry realized a moment later that they were square instead of circles. A glance down showed him that the knees of his jeans were covered in mud. And his thighs had smears that same mud and a few clear muddy footprints of an animal.

 

“Hello!” He was on his feet before he realized it.

 

He realized the lumps on the carpet were dogs.

 

Harry did not much care for dogs, the years of Ripper had not been kind to his impression. The memories gnashed at the back of his mind, like a particularly bothered nest of hornets.

 

And he disappeared again.

 

_(… you will…)_

 

Harry was in the bed again. The room was dark, but the vestigial sensation of heat lingers in the air--thick with the smell of dog. There was no weight at his side, and Harry quickly rolled onto his belly. It was a quick movement to get his legs under himself, and soon he left the bed.

 

_((…she looked terribly small and fragile, with the white bandages around her pale neck and surrounded by pale sheets. Like a bird with a broken wing, caged for its own safety. One moment, those eyes were closed and her face slack. And in the next blink they were open wide—a hospital room—a shady house filled from toe to ceiling with antlers—))_

 

Harry knew, with the sinking kind of certainty that if he did not make it out now then this would continue. This winking in and out of existence would continue unless he made its stop. There was no time to think about what had happened, there was no time to think about his wife and his children (whom the last thing he remembered of them was watching his children board the Hogwarts express. Their waving hands and cheerful faces were the last things behind his eyes before he started winking in and out of existence). There wasn’t time to plan, to calculate—there was only time to escape.

 

He trembled and went from zero to one hundred as quick as he could. He slammed through the door, and ignored the second burn of cold on his feet as he ran. He sprinted as if he was running away from Death Eaters or from his childhood tormentors that existed in the form of his cousin’s friends. He ran and ran and ran – before he knew it the dirt under his feet had turned to black top, but the only light there was, was from the moon above.

 

Dementedly, he realized with no little amount of hysteria, he had not grabbed his glasses (wherever they could have been) and he was as blind as could be sprinting as if his life depended. It probably did. It normally did.

 

_( —but was he blind? There were trees. And the edges of the blacktop. And rocks. He could see rocks. But everything was blurred-yet-not and Harry couldn’t even fathom it—)_

 

He could hear over the sound of his ragged breathing the sound of light feet pattering the road behind him, and the soft sound of something light being dragged.

 

He could see something moving out of the corner of his eye.

 

The thing that looked surprisingly crisp compared to the normal blur that was his vision—this thing, this moving thing was as crisp as if he was wearing his glasses. But it was still night, and even his eyes could not pierce the dark.

 

But it was there. It existed. It was coming for him.

 

Once he had acknowledged the shadow (even if it was just to acknowledge that he had to flee from it) he felt the weight of its presence and it felt familiar. But it was familiar in the way that dark and insidious things were familiar. His forehead ached. A moment later he felt its breath and heard its pants. The clip clop of hooves on the blacktop superimposed itself over the soft sound of whatever had been following him before.

 

Harry ran faster. His body strained to increase speed. He did not want to get caught by the thing that was following him. Whatever it was, or whoever it was – nothing good could come of it.

 

He strained, and he strained.

 

_(You will.)_

 

He felt the urgency with a fever like push against his eyes. It was almost like that bitter time when he had been fighting to keep Snape out of his head as a ‘lesson’. The urgency was like a thought that did not want to be forgotten the years of Ripper, because dire consequences would follow if it was.

 

He felt like he was fracturing, and he was losing several important shards in a trail behind himself to lead himself back to his torment.

 

He went dark again.

 

But he lingered in consciousness, but not in body. A stray moment of thought had Harry thinking that this must be what a ghost feels like. To exist, but not to exist in the same way that other people existed. But then it came to him, as if his whole body was waking up from being asleep too long—and he finally jolted back into the world.

 

He was sitting on the couch, no, scratch that – he was in an entirely different environment compared to before. His glasses were still a heavy, foreign weight on his nose. Without conscious thought, his fingers dug in to the meat of his thighs.

 

Harry inhaled sharply through his nose, even as his ears registered the even cadence of a voice from somewhere above. Harry closed his eyes against the sudden burn of tears as he stiffened up. He couldn’t breathe—he felt cold all over. He couldn’t take in enough air, his mouth was open and gasping and did he die? Was this penance?

 

A cool hand was on his forehead, and the even cadence of a voice was in front of him—but Harry didn’t have the will to hear it.

 

If he was going to filter in and out of existence like this… then… then—

 

Please. Make it end—Harry begged, not sure who he was begging to but it didn’t matter. No one had ever saved him in the past and lived for it. No, Harry had to save himself, if only to save those he cared for.

 

Harry slapped the hand on his head away—or he tried to—suddenly his wrist was in an iron clad grip so strong that his eyes jolted open with a gasp—

 

And it was the ceiling of that horrible room full of dogs—

 

—and cold steel tables all lined up in neat rows with sprawled dead bodies—

 

Flashes of faces and conversations—

 

Harry felt the scream building. It started in his gut, burning horribly as it made its inevitable track up and up. Harry didn’t want to let it out. It should stay lost—it should stay gone.

 

How could he save himself when he couldn’t even comprehend where he was?

 

The sensation of heat gave way to the sensation of cold. Harry was already in the middle of the motion, and he allowed it. The coil of his finger. It was through experience of explosive spells that jerked his wand in the past that kept his arm relatively still. He idly blinked as he watched a man fall down. He looked to his hand, and numbly accepted the fact that he had a muggle gun in his hand. It burned hot where he was touching it, compared to the burn of cold everywhere else.

 

He was sweating profusely, and the slashing cold of the wind was like bites to his open face. Harry sobbed, and wished for warmth as he let the gun fall. His body wasn’t too far behind it.

 

He kept falling—falling—falling—

 

_((“Who are you now?”))_

 

Breathing hurt. He was on fire. Harry reached for something, anything. He didn’t know if his hands were moving or not. He didn’t think he’d ever move right again.

 

There was a shrill beeping.

 

_(( “… I want… to get… out.”))_

 

Something touched his hand. But his body was too heavy to move. He had to be breathing, though. He had to be breathing, else he wouldn’t be existing in this too human fashion. Harry dimly acknowledged that he probably hadn’t been breathing, that one time he hesitated on the threshold of going and returning. There was no Dumbledore here, and Harry wanted to take that as a sign that he hadn’t reached that place again.

 

Something stretched hard, and he felt like he was snapping.

 

And then, suddenly—everything stopped. Between one moment and the next his eyes were open. His eyes were open, and he took in the blurred world around him. It was so… light. The scent of muggle hospital burned his nose. Harry’s eyes fluttered against the light, before he pulled himself together and sat up. His body ached in ways that it hadn’t since the dark times of running from Voldemort. His fingers tingled, even as his legs slipped over the side of the hospital bed.

 

He reached out, blindly, and his hand thumped hard on the bedside table. The pain of slamming in to his glasses jolted him for a moment… but then everything went slack, and he tipped over and on to the floor. The floor rushed too fast, and he couldn’t bring his hands out to save himself. He closed his eyes and let it happen, he let the world come at him fast and then—

 

Harry was used to the shifting of the world around him. The world was dark and illuminated warmly by lights at either side. The smell of the hospital was suspiciously absent to him now, or perhaps he had just grown used to it. Harry reached up and touched his face, his fingers grazed his stubble and felt for the absence of the strange tube that had been up his nose a moment ago. There was a man at the foot of his bed, and Harry focused on the strange figure. He was talking—the smooth cadence of his voice stirred some familiarity, even as he reached out to the bed side table. His fingers curled around his glasses, and he tugged it to himself.

 

He slipped them on his face, and froze when he saw that the man had stilled as well. There was something charged in the air, a taste of expectance. Harry paused before he sat up. There was an ache in his joints, and a residual tremor to his body that he pushed through. Harry frowned at the man, and like many decisions he made on the fly, he bulldozed his way through this one too. He didn’t expect to remain ‘existent’ for long.

 

“Who the hell are you?” Harry asked, his body thrumming as he narrowed his eyes at the man.

 

Dark eyes, tidy light hair—Harry dimly acknowledged that the man was probably taller, if he was judging the length of his shoulders—and a face that Harry could recognize. Harry pressed his lips together, “where am I? And where is… where is my…” Harry bit off his last question.

 

If he was a victim of abduction, asking for his Ginny was not a good idea. That was leverage.

 

The man shifted, something cool and calculating behind his eyes that reminded Harry of something, but the thought was too fleeting and he couldn’t gather his scattered existence together to really bring that in to a solid idea. “… don’t you know who I am, Will?” His voice was soothing, but static in the roar that was gathering in Harry’s head.

 

Harry disregarded the strange, abortive move that the stranger had started with the word ‘will’. Will what? “I wouldn’t be asking if I knew.” Well, there was the Gryffindor courage and obstinacy, all in plain view. Harry wanted to stare the man down, but he knew well the evils that could be done by powerful men with low morality. If this man was a wizard that could break in to minds? Harry would not make it easy for him.

 

“Will, you are currently housed at the renowned Johns Hopkins Hospital. You collapsed while apprehending Dr. Abel Gideon—stopping his rampage from claiming our dear friend, Alana.” His voice was even, and soothingly low. But at the same time, it was all nonsense to Harry’s ears. Harry drew a leg up, using the cover of the tented sheets to slip a leg over the side of the hospital bed that this stranger couldn’t readily see.

 

If he had to run, he’d given himself the chance for it.

 

But those dark eyes bore in to him in a way that reminded Harry of those too eager spiders of the forbidden forest. Just waiting for a moment of weakness. Harry knew then, in the pit of his gut, that this man could be no friend of his. Harry kept his eyes roving. Out. Out. He had to get out.

 

The man let out a heady sigh, “please, Will… you need to relax.”

 

“Are you my doctor?” Harry snapped out before he could think too hard about it. The words felt familiar on his tongue. And he didn’t know why—he had never really had a doctor before. Only a healer. Harry knew this was a muggle place. And he doubted that there were any healers anywhere. If it was a wizard hospital, they certainly wouldn’t be calling him by the wrong name.

 

Had Harry been mistaken for someone?

 

The spider-man tilted his head to the side entreatingly, “of a sort. But the nature of our relationship doesn’t appear to be the question you desire to ask.”

 

“I’ve already asked what I wanted to know, sir.” Harry pressed his lips together and tensed as—

 

And he was gone. It was black.

 

And then it wasn’t. Harry blinked up at the dark ceiling. Slowly his head tilted to the side. Stone walls. He looked down—he was in a dark jumpsuit. It felt rough against his skin, in a way he wasn’t used to since his younger years as a Dursley cast off. Slowly, Harry shifted his aching body and placed his feet on the floor. Slip on canvas shoes greeted him from below. It was so muggle that Harry could only stare numbly at it. He didn't even bother to think of why he was wearing it. He just was, and it was strange beyond reason, and Harry had been in so many strange situations, it was ridiculous that it was here and now his mind strained to adjust. 

 

Harry felt drawn, spread far too thin. And yet it felt like nothing at all.

 

“Will Graham. Visitor.” A banging came from the bars—and really, only prisons could have that kind of tone. That banging, careless drawl as some observer to the slow death of a life drifted by. Harry closed his eyes, for he didn’t want to witness any more of this insanity. Send him back to the black. Strip him of consciousness. Let it end.

 

Only, it didn’t. It didn’t end.

 

His arm ached. His head throbbed.

 

 ~~ _“You were just… curious what I would do. Someone like me. Someone who thinks how I think. Wind him up… and watch him go.”_ ~~ The voice thrummed in his ears as he eventually lifted his eyes to the figure that had been watching him for the several minutes he ignored the world. It seemed like it took forever and a day to lift his eyes passed the shined shoes. Up the pressed legs of the pants. The suit. The voice that was his own thrummed in his head against. Repeated. Faster this time. And faster still as Harry's eyes eventually tracked to the man's face.

 

To the glimmer of the dark eyes in that face. Almost perfectly framed by the bars between them.

 

It was like shadows bled off of the man's perfect suit. Harry could imagine it now. A shroud around this man like a dementor's cloak.

 

“Hello Will,” the man greeted, face impassive.

 

Harry slowly got up, and calmly stepped in to place in front of the not-man. Harry looked, really looked at him. Harry blinked his heavy eyes, and wondered when his consciousness would flee. That creeping sensation of cold was building in his gut as the silence after the greeting dragged on. Harry watched the man’s eyebrows slowly ease, and a tilt of his head. Harry did not respond in kind with a greeting. This was the second time he had seen this man while in a position of being near restrained. Well, in a jail cell he was completely restrained. Harry could only imagine why this man was here.

 

He was a monster in human flesh—because Harry had met many of those in his lifetime. A not-man stood before him. But it was off, even for that. Harry peered closer, stepping up until he could place his fingers on the bars that separated the two of them. “You… are lacking.” Harry finally concluded. It took a few minutes before he could really place what the man was lacking, though.

 

“How am I lacking, Will?” The man spoke with a heavy emphasis on subtext. But Harry didn’t know what other conversation the man was attempting to have.

 

Harry skipped over it, he couldn’t take part in a conversation he couldn’t understand. “You are—you are and you know exactly what it is.” Harry frowned as he stepped back, his fingers ghosting away from the bars.

 

The man met him with silence.

 

“Why are you here?” Harry cleared his throat, and let his eyes rove around the cell.

 

“I am curious… as to the reason you are speaking with a European accent. A mix of… British and Scottish, if I’m not mistaken.” The man hummed, and Harry took a moment to really listen to his words and the cadence from which he spoke. He had an accent as well, but Harry couldn’t place.

 

Still, “I’m British—of course I have an accent.” Harry reached up to rub his outer upper arm. His arm throbbed, but not in a way that said there was a recent injury. But the echo of something mostly healed but still in pain.

 

The man shifted his feet, listing to the side as he eyed Harry through the bars like an animal at the zoo (and Harry had had enough nightmares about such a thing to feel the hair on his arms stand up, to feel a itch in his nails that screamed that he needed to be let out). “Last I knew, you, Will Graham—“

 

“That’s not my name.” Harry cut him off. Because he was understanding now that the ‘will’ that the man kept speaking was supposed to be a name rather than an aborted sentence.

 

“Will Graham. Aged 34. Former homicide detective, and now a former Special Agent for the FBI,” the man listed off, “and a man I… was able to call my friend. For a time.” The man’s cadence was certainly smooth when he spoke. But to Harry, the words were rather… deeply concerning.

 

Harry scoffed, the sound harsh and loud—“no offense, mate—but it’s rather hard to mistake anyone for me. I’m Harry—not this… other person. And you, sir—you are no friend of mine. If you have nothing useful to tell me, I’d rather you leave.” Harry’s world seemed to jolt, and his tongue burned to speak and Harry complied. “You’re certainly not interesting enough to keep around.” Harry was rather used to his mouth getting away from him. It usually helped get him more information from irate criminals as he took them in. Of course, it also could get him in to further trouble as he had experienced it during his school years. 

 

“Did you just call me… uninteresting?” the man stilled, eyeing Harry.

 

Harry lifted his chin, “I did.”

 

The man hummed. “Well then. I believe from your rather hostile tone—“

 

“I’d be less hostile, if I knew who you were, and where I am.” Harry barely kept a lid on his swears. Not that he often swore, it just seemed like an apt thing to do at a time when his skin was itching like crazy and it felt like the walls wanted to fall in.

 

“I am Dr. Hannibal Lector. You are currently at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Which does not speak well for you, to be claiming a new name.” The man murmured, but his voice carried.

 

Harry wished that the darkness would just take him away already.

 

It didn’t.

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting on my computer for months. So I decided to post it. No plan at this moment. But I decided it would just be nice to post something even if it is rather insane. (Side note, I'm obviously not British. I apologize in advance.)


End file.
